IRAN: Another day, another U.S. bomb allegation

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden became the third ranking Bush administration official to allege recently that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. This despite a National Intelligence Estimate last year that concluded Iran had halted its weaponization effort in 2003.

Hayden follows in the footsteps of his boss, President Bush, who said in March that Iran had "declared" it was pursuing nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who alleged that Iran was trying to produce weapons-grade uranium. Neither statement appears to be rooted in publicly known facts.

But Hayden's Sunday talk show allegation, reported on by The Times' Greg Miller in Washington, was qualitatively different than those of Bush or Cheney. He admitted candidly that his assessment was not "court-of-law stuff," that he had no proof. "This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Rather, he cast the Iranian leadership in the role of rational actors. He deduced that Iran wouldn't tolerate all the international isolation and sanctions it's now weathering for a mere peaceful energy program.

ISRAEL: Elders at the gates

In July 2007, Nelson Mandela and billionaire Richard Branson founded the Elders, a council of iconic global leaders whose roster includes Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan.

The group's goals are seriously lofty: nothing less than the peaceful resolution of some of the planet's most intractable conflicts.

So it seemed inevitable that the Elders would one day try to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has defined "intractable" for most of the last century.

In mid-April, an Elders fact-finding mission, including Annan, Carter and former Irish President Mary Robinson will travel to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian territories "to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the interlocking Middle Eastern conflicts." 

They might not get the warmest reception in Israel. Tutu is already regarded dimly here for his long-standing criticism of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Carter joined that list recently with the publication of his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

One Israeli blogger has already dubbed the venture "The Elders of Moron." The Foreign Ministry, according to the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot, responded that the time wasn't right "to bring more players into the political process, which is already in a complex situation."

The paper quoted Israel's U.N. ambassador, Danny Gillerman, as having a much more blunt response.

"This is an initiative out of which no good can come," Gillerman said.  "Most
of the members of the group, particularly Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, are
people with a bias who have proved to be hostile to Israel." 

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

IRAQ: Fog of war

As Basra and Baghdad begin digging out from five days of fighting between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi and U.S. forces, people outside Iraq, and a lot of people in the country, are no doubt scratching their heads as they try to decipher what really happened.

The parties involved have not always helped clarify things.

Iraqi and U.S. officials say the military offensive that sparked the fighting was aimed at criminal gangs and rogue militias, not at the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. But it was Sadr's fighters who went on the defensive. It was also Sadr's call for a cease-fire that led to the calming of things today, and it was Sadr who got thanks from U.S. and Iraqi officials for calling the halt to combat.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki called Sadr's move a "step in the right direction." U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo echoed that today. "We join the prime minister in welcoming Sayyid Al Sadr's statement," she said.

Sadr, meanwhile, insists that his militia is innocent of the wanton violence that Maliki says prompted the crackdown, yet he showed a masterful command of the bloodshed. Shortly after his cease-fire call Sunday evening, the fighting that had raged in Iraq's strongholds ground nearly to a halt.

The U.S. military said it was surprised how quickly the effects were felt. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, said that as of this afternoon, there had been a 20% drop in attacks nationwide compared with the previous day.

Iraq's government now is faced with trying to portray the Basra offensive as successful, even though Maliki's security forces proved unable to flush militias from Basra, as the prime minister had vowed to do. Three days into the battle, he called for help from American and British forces. U.S. warplanes conducted airstrikes, and U.S. Army special forces were involved in some ground operations.

As this was going on, U.S. officials hammered away at the idea that the Basra offensive was Iraqi-led and Iraqi-organized and a promising display of Maliki's determination to take on the country's militia problem — but not the Sadr's militiamen, they hastened to add.  President Bush called it a "defining moment" for Iraq.

There has been no U.S. reaction to the news that Iran, whom Washington accuses of meddling in Iraq's violence, played a key role in bringing the standoff to an end. Iraqi lawmakers have said they went to Iran and asked for help in brokering a deal between Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, and Iraqi leaders.

Nantongo said she had no information on Iran's role.

This morning brought fresh attacks on the Green Zone, the Baghdad diplomatic enclave that was pounded throughout the fighting by missiles fired from Mahdi Army strongholds in east Baghdad. That raised questions about the effectiveness of Sadr's call for calm. Nobody was reported killed in the latest Green Zone strikes, but Iraq's Interior Ministry gave a grim accounting from the previous week of battles:

605 people dead, including 325 in Basra and 140 in Baghdad.

And the U.S. military today announced the deaths of two more troops. An Army soldier died in mainly Shiite northeast Baghdad earlier in the day when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb, and a Marine died March 29 of wounds suffered in an attack six days earlier, military statements said. The deaths bring to at least 4,011 the number of American forces killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to www.icasualties.org.

— Times staff writers

SYRIA: Arab League Summit's bitter aftertaste

The Arab League Summit ended over the weekend in the Syrian capital of Damascus with no breakthroughs, as expected, on the various political crises of the region.

The main news that came out of this annual meeting of Arab leaders was the absence of several heads of state. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, among other countries, sent low-ranking officials to the conference because, in their eyes, Damascus was blocking the selection of a president in Lebanon, which sent no one to the conference.

EGYPT: Something quiet?

The desert dust had blown away and the pyramids sharpened beyond the skyline. The air was brisk and clear; the children were out, racing amid bushes and flowers. There was abandon in their voices, perhaps they felt spring slipping closer to summer, or maybe it was the freedom of being unleashed beneath the stars. I listened to these neighborhood kids as the TV played in the background: killing in Gaza, uncertainty in Lebanon, warships in the Persian Gulf, bloodshed in Baghdad, bread lines in Cairo, not too far from where the children played.

I didn't feel like blogging about any of that; the same images would be there tomorrow, the next day. Why not write something quiet? I turned off the TV and opened wide the window. In a region so accustomed to breathtaking hostility, it's nice to let in other sounds: the creak of a swing, the laughter of a child, a mother's call to come home.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

ISRAEL: A day of protests

Extra police deployed throughout Israel and the West Bank Sunday as Palestinians marked the annual protest known as Land Day.

Thousands of demonstrators turned out in several cities to decry what they say is the ongoing Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and homes.

In the northern Arab town of Sakhnin a vigil marked the first Land Day in 1976 when Israeli police killed six protesters.

A 2,000-strong march took place Saturday in Jaffa — a coastal Arab city that has become a focal point for tense land disputes. Rights groups there are protesting eviction and demolition orders on hundreds of homes on the grounds of construction violations.

Dov Khenin, a leftist Israeli Knesset member, said the event serves as an annual reminder of the plight of Palestinian communities deep inside Israel.

"Land Day is more relevant than ever,” he said.  “The entire Israeli public should assist the Arab community in their struggle for equality in their homeland."

Israeli troops used tear gas to disperse a protest near Nablus, but there were no serious injuries reported.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Palestinian children stage a sit-in to mark "Land Day" at the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, on Monday. Land Day commemorates the killing of six Israeli-Arabs during a 1976 protest against Israeli land confiscations. Credit: MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images

IRAQ: Sadr's statement calling for end to violence

Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr called for an end to the ongoing clashes between the government and his Mahdi Army militia on Sunday. Sadr made his statement after megotiatioms with representatives from the government's ruling Shiite coalition. 

The pledge calls for his men to stop fighting, but demands the Iraqi security forces stop targeting his supporters and release all of his followers who have been detained in Iraqi jails. Even after his statement was released, fighting continued in some parts of Baghdad and the southern port of Basra between his supporters and Iraqi police and army. Sadr's statement is below:

IRAQ: Hard times in Sadr-land

As cleric Muqtada Sadr called Sunday for his supporters to end their fighting with the government across Iraq, horrible accounts have emerged of civilian suffering in neighborhoods in Basra and Baghdad.

One man from Shaab in eastern Baghdad said he watched Wednesday night as Mahdi Army fighters closed off streets and burned tires in his neighborhood. U.S. jets and choppers roared overhead. In the evening, an Iraqi soccer game was on TV; people went inside to watch Iraq play Qatar. It was then that fighters set up their mortar tubes a hundred meters from one home. Before they could fire off a round, a U.S. helicopter shot off a rocket and an explosion ripped the area.

There were seven or eight burned, bleeding bodies lying on the street. Fighters came after two or three hours and lifted the dead militiamen, some of whom were probably teenagers. The blast had shattered windows and sent shrapnel flying, injuring a 6-year-old girl.

The girl's father stood on the street and cursed the Mahdi Army. He shouted that he had never wanted to get involved in the violence. Some friends told him to be quiet, that he shouldn't let anyone hear him talking that way. Eventually they led him inside his damaged house.

— A Times employee in Baghdad

Photo: An Iraqi woman weeps over a coffin  at a hospital in the Sadr City district following the death of a relative who was killed during clashes between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi and U.S forces on March 30, 2008 in Baghdad. Credit: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images

IRAQ: Expect the unexpected

If someone had told me a few months ago that Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods would be safer than Shiite areas, I would have thought this was madness. Sectarian fighting had driven most Sunnis, including my family and me, out of their homes.

One of my colleagues wrote about his own home being taken over a little over a year ago.

But things gradually improved over the fall and winter, so 18 months after I had moved my family to Syria and moved myself into the Los Angeles Times bureau, I decided my family could return. I was both excited and terrified. I needed just one reason to cancel the plan. But everyone supported it.

"It's safer now, and it has always been safer for women on the streets. They aren't targeted like men," a colleague told me. "Just make sure you don't make a routine out of going home every day."

Of course, home is not the place where my family once lived. That area remains volatile. So I decided to search for a house to rent in a nice middle-class neighborhood inhabited by Sunnis and Shiites, with a Sunni and a Shiite mosque peacefully coexisting on the same block.

My mother and father came back from Syria first. My wife and two young children followed about a month later.

EGYPT: A battle over female circumcision

Islamists and conservative clerics are fighting proposed legislation in the Egyptian parliament that would criminalize female circumcision and raise the minimum age of when a girl can marry. The Islamists view the bill as an affront to Sharia law. 

The legislation drafted by the government-backed National Council for Motherhood and Childhood would impose a prison sentence of as long as two years and a maximum fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds, or about $1,000. The proposal would raise the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18. The bill has been met with a storm of anger by a number of delegates from both the majority and the Islamist opposition led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Opponents say the new restrictions are an attempt by the government to impose a Western agenda on an Islamic society. Some clerics, in opposing the bill, state that Islamic Sharia law condones female circumcision and imposes no minimum age of marriage. "Religion does not prohibit or criminalize female circumcision," prominent Islamic scholar Mustafa al-Shaka said to the local press this week.

Islamic scholars have been divided over the religious validity of female circumcision. One camp holds that Islam opposes it, while the other argues that this procedure, in which parts of the female genitals are removed, is necessary to tame a woman's sexual desires and ensure decency.

The bill's architects hold that there is a national consensus on the criminalization of female circumcision. "Nobody can deny that the Egyptian society resents the negative health effects caused by [female] circumcision," said Moushira Khattab, secretary-general of the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood. "Thus, the punishment of those who conduct that practice is a must."    

Female circumcision remains a widespread practice in Egypt, despite having been illegal for years. About 70% of Egyptian girls are believed to be victims of the practice. Last summer, the death of a 12-year-old girl in Upper Egypt in a clinic where she was undergoing the procedure reignited calls to impose harsher penalties on practitioners of the surgery.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo